Avatars, Napoleon, and Angry Birds: Theme Park News

What’s happening in the world of amusement parks? Phone apps, world domination, and futuristic technology are inspiring some interesting theme park ideas.

An augmented-reality, Kinect-powered theme park, Live Park, opened last December outside Seoul. The immersive experience includes 50 attractions within a 10,000-square-meter space through which the visitors—and the avatars they create—move and interact with 3D video projections, screens, touchable art installations, and live performers. The Live Park videos make the experience look simultaneously thrilling and overwhelming, sort of like the concept of an audience-participation Cirque du Soleil.

Angry Birds Land will open this summer at Finland’s Särkänniemi Adventure Park. Keep track of the park’s construction this spring, which surely will utilize massive slingshots, piles of boulders, and insecurely stacked lumber here.

Has Lithuania’s Stalin Land started a trend? The mayor of a small town south of Paris has proposed a history theme park dedicated to Napoleon. While the theme-park proposal is being considered more seriously by journalists than by investors, the mayor cites the flagging Euro and lack of area jobs as part of his ins